DNF4-SYSTEM-UPGRADE(8)

NAME
dnf4-system-upgrade - DNF system-upgrade Plugin

DESCRIPTION

DNF system-upgrades plugin provides three commands: system-upgrade, offline-upgrade, and offline-distrosync. Only system-upgrade command requires increase of distribution major version (--releasever) compared to installed version.

dnf system-upgrade is a recommended way to upgrade a system to a new major release. It replaces fedup (the old Fedora Upgrade tool). Before you proceed ensure that your system is fully upgraded (dnf --refresh upgrade).

The system-upgrade command also performes additional actions necessary for the upgrade of the system, for example an upgrade of groups and environments.

SYNOPSIS

dnf system-upgrade download --releasever VERSION [OPTIONS]

dnf system-upgrade reboot

dnf system-upgrade reboot --poweroff

dnf system-upgrade clean

dnf system-upgrade log

dnf system-upgrade log --number=<number>

dnf offline-upgrade download [OPTIONS]

dnf offline-upgrade reboot

dnf offline-upgrade reboot --poweroff

dnf offline-upgrade clean

dnf offline-upgrade log

dnf offline-upgrade log --number=<number>

dnf offline-distrosync download [OPTIONS]

dnf offline-distrosync reboot

dnf offline-distrosync reboot --poweroff

dnf offline-distrosync clean

dnf offline-distrosync log

dnf offline-distrosync log --number=<number>

SUBCOMMANDS

download
    Downloads everything needed to upgrade to a new major release.

reboot
    Prepares the system to perform the upgrade, and reboots to start the upgrade. This can only be used after the download command completes successfully.

clean
    Remove previously-downloaded data. This happens automatically at the end of a successful upgrade.

log Used to see a list of boots during which an upgrade was attempted, or show the logs from an upgrade attempt. The logs for one of the boots can be shown by specifying one of the numbers in the first column. Negative numbers can be used to number the boots from last to first. For example, log --number=-1 can be used to see the logs for the last upgrade attempt.

OPTIONS

--releasever=VERSION
    REQUIRED. The version to upgrade to. Sets $releasever in all enabled repos. Usually a number, or rawhide.

--downloaddir=<path>
    Redirect download of packages to provided <path>. By default, packages are downloaded into (per repository created) subdirectories of /var/lib/dnf/system-upgrade.

--distro-sync
    Behave like dnf distro-sync: always install packages from the new release, even if they are older than the currently-installed version. This is the default behavior.

--no-downgrade
    Behave like dnf update: do not install packages from the new release if they are older than what is currently installed. This is the opposite of --distro-sync. If both are specified, the last option will be used. The option cannot be used with the offline-distrosync command.

--poweroff
    When applied with the reboot subcommand, the system will power off after upgrades are completed, instead of restarting.

--number
    Applied with log subcommand will show the log specified by the number.

NOTES

dnf system-upgrade reboot does not create a "System Upgrade" boot item. The upgrade will start regardless of which boot item is chosen.

The DNF_SYSTEM_UPGRADE_NO_REBOOT environment variable can be set to a non-empty value to disable the actual reboot performed by system-upgrade (e.g. for testing purposes).

Since this is a DNF plugin, options accepted by dnf are also valid here, such as --allowerasing. See dnf(8) for more information.

The fedup command is not provided, not even as an alias for dnf system-upgrade.

BUGS

Upgrading from install media (e.g. a DVD or .iso file) currently requires the user to manually set up a DNF repo and fstab entry for the media.

EXAMPLES

  Typical upgrade usage

dnf --refresh upgrade

dnf system-upgrade download --releasever 26

dnf system-upgrade reboot

  Show logs from last upgrade attempt

dnf system-upgrade log --number=-1

REPORTING BUGS

Bugs should be filed here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/

For more info on filing bugs, see the Fedora Project wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs_and_feature_requests

Please include /var/log/dnf.log and the output of dnf system-upgrade log --number=-1 (if applicable) in your bug reports.

Problems with dependency solving during download are best reported to the maintainers of the package(s) with the dependency problems.

Similarly, problems encountered on your system after the upgrade completes should be reported to the maintainers of the affected components. In other words: if (for example) KDE stops working, it's best if you report that to the KDE maintainers.

SEE ALSO

dnf(8), dnf.conf(5), journalctl(1).

  Project homepage

https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf-plugins-core

AUTHORS

Will Woods <wwoods@redhat.com>

Štěpán Smetana <ssmetana@redhat.com>

AUTHOR
See AUTHORS in your Core DNF Plugins distribution

COPYRIGHT
2025, Red Hat, Licensed under GPLv2+